Twenty-five years ago they said a festival of contemporary dance would never work in London, but Val Bourne proved them wrong. Our correspondent meets the woman still at the helm of Dance Umbrella

SHE is a familiar face in the foyer. A slim 64-year-old woman with fantastically tuned dancer’s legs and a slightly shambolic air. She is friend, fan and mother figure all rolled into one, an essential ingredient in any first night audience. Val Bourne, for 25 years the driving force behind Dance Umbrella, is arguably the most important woman in British dance

‘I’ve had the best possible time.’ The words bubble up out of Val Bourne, founder and artistic director of Dance Umbrella, as she looks back on twenty-five years of the UK’s premier contemporary dance festival. ‘It’s great that we’ve lasted this long. Rumour had it, the powers that be thought if they gave us enough rope we’d hang ourselves. Maybe they just didn’t give us enough rope!

‘I’ve been extraordinarily lucky,’ Bourne continues on a more reflective note. ‘It’s been a great time for contemporary dance, if you think about it. In the beginning a lot of work looked rather similar because it was all coming out of just two schools. 25 years on and contemporary dance is remarkably rich in its diversity and scope.’

"Our first contemporary dance festival, in 1978, nearly caused a riot," recalls Val Bourne, the artistic director and founder of Dance Umbrella. After Douglas Dunn, an American soloist, had made a slow circuit of the stage at Riverside Studios on his back, "one man stood up and said he had never been so insulted in his life."

Steps in the right direction Celebrating its 25th birthday, promoter Dance Umbrella launches its biggest ever festival this month, while its founder is upbeat about attracting new audiences and continuing to change public perceptions, as Susan Elkin discovers, for The Stage.

Dance Umbrella, dubbed "the most adventurous dance promoter in Britain", is celebrating its 25th birthday in style. From this month, until November 8, you can see literally dozens of cutting-edge contemporary dance companies all over London at the South Bank, The Place, the Barbican, Greenwich Dance Agency and elsewhere. It is Dance Umbrella's biggest ever festival.

And this Sunday (September 28) there is a birthday gala at Sadler's Wells. Dance Umbrella's charismatic founder Val Bourne says with disingenuous casualness that the gala will include "bits of this and that".

Jerwood Double - A Major Contribution to Dance Umbrella by Donald Hutera

Imagine £5 tickets to see world-class artists in a top London dance venue.What a deal! This is what the Jerwood Proms offered Dance Umbrella punters in 2002. Happily, the same scheme will be up and running in autumn 2003.

‘I’m really keen to bring in new audiences,’ says Umbrella director Val Bourne. ‘With football, rock concerts and even ballet, you pretty much know what you’re going to get.We [in the dance industry] are in danger of alienating audiences by overpricing tickets for work which they may not know at all. It’s important for people not to be excluded because of money. Thanks to the Proms, for £5 each you can have a crack at dance from the UK, America and Japan. Even if you like only one of them, at fifteen quid you will still have done well.’

Brolly good show The 25th Umbrella showed our great favourites are still on their toes. David Dougill [The Times] reports

Quote:

Dance Umbrella began in a small way in 1978 as an experimental London season to showcase new voices in contemporary dance from home and abroad. It is now one of the most important modern-dance festivals in the world, still directed by its founder, the visionary Val Bourne. As Richard Alston — one of the original participants — said at the 25th-birthday gala that opened the current festival at Sadler’s Wells: “Val programmes the dance she loves.”

Dance Umbrella presented the Jerwood Proms as part of Dance Umbrella 2003, this unique Stand Up For Dance initiative gave nearly 4,500 people the opportunity to enjoy the world’s best contemporary dance companies (Michael Clark, Trisha Brown Dance Company and KARAS) at Sadler’s Wells, for just a £5 per standing place.

Dance Umbrella is delighted that the Jerwood Charitable Foundation again chose to support this initiative as part of Dance Umbrella 2003, to deliver one of the best arts bargain in Britain.[1]

2. Dance Umbrella at 25 - BBC4, Mon 27 Oct at 8.30pm

Dance Umbrella is further delighted to announce the transmission date and time of the documentary Dance Umbrella at 25 on BBC4, as Monday 27 October at 8.30pm. Made by Silverapples Media and shot over the spring and summer of 2003, Dance Umbrella at 25 celebrates the the 25th anniversary of Dance Umbrella and the personal journey of its founder and Artistic Director, Val Bourne.

3. Matthews Hawkins Stories that Run Parrellel, as it turns out.

In a new initiative, 2001 Jerwood Choreography Award winning choreographer/dancer Matthew Hawkins continues to read different, 30 minute fragments, from his dance diary as part of Dance Umbrella's 25th Anniversary Festival. In 2001 Hawkins was awarded the Chris de Marigny Dance Writers Award.

· Thurs 16 Oct @ 7pm The Place Founders Studio

· Fri 24 Oct @ 6.30pm Sadler’s Wells:Kahn Lecture Theatre

· Sat 25 Oct @ 6.30pm Royal Festival Hall: Voice Box

4. Umbrella Unfurled.

To celebrate Dance Umbrella’s 25th anniversary, famous, infamous and never seen before historical and documentary footage of the Dance Umbrella festival will slowly reveal itself through the month of October in a growing video installation throughout the Royal Festival Hall foyers. Umbrella Unfurled is free of charge.

5. Jerwood Choreography Awards

The winners of the 2003 Jerwood Choreography Awards will be announced and presented by William Forsythe on Monday 20 October at LABAN, Creekside, London SE8. Three awards in total will be presented, one for £17,000 and two for £8,500. Performance artist Rose English will host the evening which will also feature performances from past Award Winners Tom Sapsford, Maresa von Stockert and Jasmin Vardimon. Dance Umbrella has once again been appointed Managing Agent for the Awards scheme and will provide moral and administrative support for the choreographers throughout the process.

6. Dance Umbrella and Critical Dance Festival Forum

Dance Umbrella has teamed up with Criticaldance.com to provide a, views and reviews forum, for audience members with regard to Dance Umbrella 2003 events and performances. The Festival Forum can be found at www.danceumbrella.co.uk

For more information check out the updated Dance Umbrella website including festival videoclips and tour news at www.danceumbrella.co.uk

Dance Umbrella was founded in 1978 with the aim of reflecting and encouraging the burgeoning interest in contemporary dance in Britain. From modest beginnings as a showcase for emerging choreographers, Dance Umbrella’s annual London festival now ranks highly among Europe’s leading international dance festivals and the organisation is recognised as one of Britain’s most adventurous dance promoters presenting a year round programme of work in London and across the UK. Under Val Bourne’s artistic direction, Dance Umbrella has been responsible for introducing into this country some of the greatest international contemporary dance companies as well as nurturing, promoting and sponsoring some of the best of British modern dance.The commissioning programme is a vital part of that success and this year is supporting Michael Clark, Charles Linehan Company, Russell Maliphant Company and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Dance Umbrella 2002 achieved the highest ever attendance of any festival in the company’s history achieving 92% over the 59 public performances.

At the gala for Dance Umbrella's 25th anniversary, the choreographer Richard Alston introduced Val Bourne, who has directed the Contemporary Dance Festival from the beginning. She chooses artists, he said, "because she loves them".

The breadth of Bourne's enthusiasm is astonishing: all shades of dance, experimental drama, mime.... Perhaps only Bourne manages to love all of it, but that inclusiveness is essential to Umbrella's success, its vital importance to dance in Britain. Indeed, her month-long festival offered a snapshot of the state of contemporary dance.

One of the undoubted highlights of next year’s Dance Umbrella festival will be the UK premiere of Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Split Sides at The Barbican as part of BITE:04. Following the sell-out success of the Dance Umbrella commissioned Merce Cunningham Dance Company Anniversary Events at Tate Modern ending DU2003, Split Sides will feature music by Radiohead and Sigur Ros.

Dance Umbrella also plans to present the festival debuts of Chinese born–New York based Shen Wei, Compagnie Philippe Decoufle and Les Ballet C de la B, featuring choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, all presenting new work to the UK, as well as Saburo Teshigawara’s reprised solo Bones in Pages and new work from UK choreographers Yolande Snaith, Siobhan Davies, Yael Flexer and Carol Brown.

Venues under the Umbrella next year are due to include Sadler’s Wells, The Place, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican, and the return of Riverside Studios to the festival line up. Dance Umbrella 2004 runs from September to November.

In addition to the UK premiere of Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Split Sides, in 2004 Dance Umbrella will present the first UK tour of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Stephen Petronio Company UK Tour Spring 2004

In the Spring of 2004 Dance Umbrella presents the first UK Tour of Stephen Petronio Company since 1997, with a triple-bill of recent work presented as The Gotham Suite, featuring The Island of Misfit Toys and City of Twist. The programme also includes Broken Man, Petronio’s first solo since 1996, set to music by Blixa Bargeld.

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